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A person of no small rank has informed me, that Mr. Addison was inexpressibly chagrined at this noble conclusion of WINDSORFOREST, both as a politician and as a poet. As a politician, because it so highly celebrated that treaty of peace which he deemed so pernicious to the liberties of Europe; and as a poet, because he was deeply conscious that his own CAMPAIGN, that gazette in rhyme, contained no strokes of such genuine and sublime poetry as the conclusion before us.

It is one of the greatest and most pleasing arts of descriptive poetry, to introduce moral sentences and instructions in an oblique and indirect manner, in places where one naturally expects only painting and amusement. We have virtue, as POPE remarks,* put upon us by surprize, and are pleased to find a thing where we should never have looked to meet with it. I must do a pleasing English poet the justice to observe, that it is this particular art

that

Iliad. B. 16. in the notes: Ver. 465.

that is the very distinguishing excellence of COOPER'S-HILL; throughout which, the de✔scriptions of places, and images raised by the poet, are still tending to some hint, or leading into some reflection, upon moral life, or political institution; much in the same manner as the real sight of such scenes and prospects is apt to give the mind a composed turn, and incline it to thoughts and contemplations that have a relation to the object. This is the great charm of the incomparable ELEGY written in a Country Church-Yard. Having mentioned the rustic monuments and simple epitaphs of the swains, the amiable poet falls into a very natural reflection:

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the chearful day,
Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind?

Of this art POPE has exhibited some specimens in the poem we are examining, but not so many as might be expected from a mind so strongly inclined to a moral way of writ

1

ing,

ing. After speaking of hunting the hare, he immediately subjoins, much in the spirit of Denham,

Beasts urg'd by us their fellow-beasts pursue,
And learn of man each other to undo.*

Where he is describing the tyrannies formerly exercised in this kingdom,

Cities laid waste, they storm'd the dens and caves,

He instantly adds, with an indignation becom ing a true lover of liberty,

For wiser brutes were backward to be slaves.+

But I am afraid our author, in the following passage, has fallen into a fault rather uncommon in his writings, a reflection that is very far-fetched and forced;

naturaluest

Here waving groves a chequer'd scene display,
And part admit, and part exclude the day;

As

* Ver. 123. But a critic of taste objected to me the use of the word undo; and of the word backward in a subsequent line.

↑ Ver. 50.

As some coy nymph her lover's warm address
Nor quite indulges, nor can quite repress.

*

Bohours would rank this comparison among false thoughts and Italian conceits; such particularly as abound in the works of Marino. The fallacy consists in giving design and artifice to the wood, as well as to the coquette; and in putting the light of the sun and the warmth of a lover on a level.

Vinto

A pathetic reflection, properly introduced into a descriptive poem, will have greater force and beauty, and more deeply interest a reader, than a moral one. When POPE, therefore, has described a pheasant shot, he breaks out into a very masterly exclamation;

Ah! what avail his glossy varying dyes,
His purple crest, and scarlet-circled eyes,
The vivid green his shining plumes unfold,

His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold ?+

This exquisite picture heightens the distress, and powerfully excites the commiseration of

the

* Ver. 17.

+ Ver. 115.

the reader. Under this head, it would be unpardonable to omit a capital, and, I think, one of the most excellent exa.nples extant, of the beauty here intended, in the third Georgic of Virgil. The poet having mournfully described a steer struck with a pestilence, and falling down dead in the middle of his work, artfully reminds us of his former services;

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Quid labor aut benefacta juvant? Quid vomere terras
Invertisse graves?†

This circumstance would have been sufficient, as it raised our pity from a motive of gratitude; but with this circumstance the tender Virgil was not content; what he adds, therefore, of the natural undeviating temperance of the animal, who cannot have contracted disease by excess, and who for that reason deserved a better fate, is moving beyond compare:

-Atqui non Massica Bacchi

Munera, non illis epulæ nocuere repostæ !

Frondibus, et victu pascuntur simplicis herbæ ;

VOL. I.

D

* Ver. 525.

Pocula

+ By the epithet GRAVES, Virgil insinuates, after his manner, the difficulty and laboriousness of the work.

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